Filling in the Blanks
by wrldpossibility
Summary: Michael attempts to fill in some of the blanks of the past seven years. Afterward universe. Set two months after Henry's birth.


AN: I've had some prompts for this Afterward universe, which I'm working through: Michael's anxiety (especially when his family is out of his sight) Michael's jealousy, and some of the unknowns from the seven years they all lost. That's a lot to tackle, but I've tried, in this one LONG fic. Takes place when Henry is about eight weeks old, right around the time of Laundry Night.

* * *

After the ordeal of Henry's birth, Michael worked hard to convince himself his episodes of PTSD were over. When, out of the blue one afternoon, his vision suddenly narrowed to a black speck while holding Henry in his arms, he told himself the acute anxiety wasn't happening, and when he felt the prick of cold sweat at the sight of a particular car too long in his rear-view mirror driving Mike to school, he reminded himself he didn't have time for such indulgences as panic attacks. Then he lost Mike for eight minutes and 26 seconds at a gas station on a Saturday in September, and knew with a jolt of certainty that he was not healed, was not healthy, and was not in control of the panic that hovered at the edge of his life, waiting to pounce.

They'd been on the way to the Ithaca Sciencecenter, a promised outing for Mike, who had been so good and helpful with Henry. When Michael stopped to fill the tank at the Shell station on Highway 13, Mike spoke up from the back seat.

"Dad? I have to go to the bathroom."

A glance into the back seat to study Mike's expression told Michael the need was already acute. He felt a stab of irritation: hadn't he reminded Mike to go before they left home? If he got out of the car, Henry would cry, and Michael would have to get him out too…it would be a whole thing. "Give me a few minutes, and we'll all go in," Michael told him. He'd already activated the pump.

"Dad, please! I gotta go now. I know where to go," Mike protested.

Michael glanced over his shoulder toward the station. The restrooms were at the back of the convenience store inside. "Not alone," Michael told him.

"Dad! I'm in _second grade!_ I can do this by myself!" He squirmed in his seat, clearly desperate. Michael called to mind more than one therapy session in which he'd been told he could not treat his family like fine china, in which he'd been reminded he should not project _his_ fears onto his children.

"Okay, go. Go." He pinched his eyes shut, waiting for Henry's inevitable wail. The door slammed after Mike, triggering the expected cry, and as Mike exited, Michael bent into the interior to soothe the baby. He unbuckled him, scooped him up, and juggled the task of filling the tank and rocking the baby against his chest. When he glanced up, Mike had already disappeared into the building.

When the pump clicked off and he'd paid, he was forced to buckle Henry back in, drive out of the pump area to clear a space for a waiting car, and slide into a parking space in front of the station. Then _un_ buckle Henry again to go inside. Michael estimated the process took about three minutes, during which time Mike hadn't emerged. Inside the station, he made a beeline for the restroom. He knocked on the door. "Occupied," someone said from behind the locked door. Someone who was not Mike.

He turned and scanned the few aisles of the store, glancing around chip bag displays and automotive supplies, Henry tucked against one shoulder. No Mike. At the counter, he asked the bored-looking clerk if a little boy had just used the facilities. "I don't think so," he answered, frowning.

"Seven years old, brown hair, he was just here."

He shook his head again. "Nah, I don't think I saw him."

But the aisles were empty, the parking lot was empty. A glance out the door told him the car was still empty. There was no where else he could be, so he spun back toward the bathroom, and pounded on the door again, adding, "Mike?!"

"I said, occupied, man!" the same someone shouted at him. The clerk now looked at Michael with more interest. He didn't have to wonder how he looked…the cold sweat already pricked on his skin, his vision had already narrowed with LLI precision as adrenaline flooded his veins. Mercifully, Henry seemed content as long as he remained in Michael's arms.

"Is there another bathroom?" he spat at the clerk. He shook his head nervously, very clearly hoping Michael would leave.

He pushed open the door, the _ding_ over his head echoing in his ears, and spun in a quick circle in the parking lot. No Mike. Next door, a sandwich shop abutted the gas station. Maybe he'd gone in there, if there had been a wait for the bathroom? An almost frightening spike of hope shot through him. He ran there, pushing swiftly through the door to ask the startled teenager behind the counter for their restroom. She pointed quickly, even though a sign right at the counter signified it was reserved for paying customers only. He turned the handle…empty restroom. Without even looking at the girl again, he ran back outside.

At the car, his head spun. There was nothing else…there was nowhere…he ran back into the gas station, and told the clerk. "He had to have been here! This tall, blue shirt, reddish-brown hair!"

He shook his head again. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't - "

"Think!" Michael shouted at him. Henry startled, his hands instinctively splaying on Michael's chest. Somehow, through the darkness tunneling his vision, he managed to curve one palm against his small back. "Shh," he gasped.

"Can I call someone for you?" the clerk asked timidly. He was slight and wiry, and didn't look like he wanted anything to do with whatever problems Michael brought with him. "Do you need like, medical attention?"

Medical…what? "I need my _son_ ," Michael yelled. In fact, if he didn't materialize into Michael's field of vision right now, he was going to rip this place apart with his bare hands. He scanned the aisles again, but this time, in addition to the absence of Mike, he catalogued minute details: metal shelving, held together with 3/4 inch screws at each corner. Plastic bottles of soda and water, stacked in eight by ten squares, twelve bottles high. Black and gray checked linoleum, sticky with some spilled substance, dust bunnies collecting in the corner of a hallway…"What's down there?" he shot toward the clerk.

"Uh, the break room?"

Michael sprinted down the short hallway, and barreled through the door, but the break room, too, was empty. A soda can sat on a folding table. A wipe board on the wall displayed a calendar grid of schedules, a mop lay on the floor. He nearly wailed in frustration. What had he been thinking, allowing Mike to use a public bathroom alone? He, Michael, had collected way too many enemies over the years to risk such a thing. Entirely too many people would love to hold such a precious something - someone - over him. His vision had been reduced to just a thin slice of what it should be, the blackness that usually remained at the edges when he panicked now saturating everything, everything…he spun back out the front door, swiftly glancing left to right, seeing only what was right in front of him, like shining a flashlight across a dark field. It also felt hard to breathe, and his hands, holding Henry, tingled ominously. When had all the oxygen left the air?

He saw the sandwich shop. He saw the gas pumps. He saw the access road they'd come in on from the highway. And then, then…he saw Mike. He saw him. He saw him. Walking toward him, hopping across a puddle in the parking lot.

Relief flooded every fiber of Michael's being. It rose so suddenly, in fact, that he thought he might be sick, right there by the car, holding Henry. He gasped air, trying to hang onto his baby, who had somehow become very heavy in his arms. "Mike," he managed to call, "over here."

Mike's head snapped up from the puddles he jumped, and instantly, he looked alarmed. "Dad?"

"Take Henry," he said, when he'd materialized by his side. He shoved his brother at him. "Take him."

Mike received him a bit clumsily, but Michael had no choice but to relinquish the baby to him anyway; his hands had become completely useless, tingling and numb. The pinprick of vision had diminished to nothing; Michael saw only blackness, everywhere. He tried telling himself firmly to stop, that he didn't need to absorb this blanket of nothingness his brain so clearly desired. He'd found Mike. It was alright. He didn't need to shut down now. But it was too late…he sunk down to the curb, his head between his knees.

"Dad?" Tears. In Mike's disembodied voice, somewhere above him.

"Where. Were you?" Each word effort well spent. He took long, deep breaths, and with each, the tingling slowly subsided, his vision slowly clearing.

"In the bathroom," Mike answered shakily. "At the gas station." He pointed across the street, and when Michael lifted his head to follow the direction of his finger, squinting at the newfound light of day, he understood. Directly opposite the Shell station sat a BP station, just across the access road. From Mike's seat in the back of the car, _that_ had been the gas station convenience store he'd seen.

"You never went in here?" Michael asked, nodding at the building behind him.

Mike shook his head. "I'm sorry, Dad. I didn't see…I just went over there. But it took awhile, because there was a line." He struggled to hold Henry, squirming now in his grasp, and Michael started to rise to take him back, but his head spun alarmingly when he tried.

The gas station clerk popped his head out the door, saw them on the curb, and frowned. "You found him, then?" Michael managed to nod, but this didn't seem to satisfy the guy. "You okay, kid?" he asked Mike. "This your dad?"

Mike nodded too, looking confused. The clerk looked at them both long and hard, like maybe he wanted to memorize what they all looked like, Michael and these two children, then slipped back inside to peer at them through the glass door.

"Were you looking for me?" Mike ventured. He asked this question cautiously, and Michael knew his appearance and behavior still frightened him. He wanted to tell him he'd be okay in a minute, but he really wasn't sure.

"Yes," he said simply. "I was looking for you." He didn't add, _I was about to murder every single person I thought may have come into contact with you. I was ready to tear this place apart, brick by brick._

* * *

"I nearly lost my mind," he told Sara later. She sympathized, starting to tell him a story about a crowded outdoor market in Panama and colorful kites that had lured Mike away from her a few years back, and he laid a hand on her arm to stop her. "No," he told her, forcing brutal honestly into his voice. "I mean, I _really_ almost did." He'd described how long it had taken him to pull himself back together: at least fifteen minutes at the curb, wiling his vision to clear and his lungs to fill, while Mike held Henry. "The gas station clerk probably called the police," he admitted. "He definitely thought about it, my behavior seemed so suspicious."

"You should have called me."

He shook his head; she was still on mandatory bedrest. But he'd wanted to. And had the clerk insisted on calling the authorities, he would have. For the kids' sakes, he would have had to. When Michael was still shaken up, hours later, Sara contacted Dr. Kate on his behalf, and he didn't argue. He resumed solo sessions the very next day.

"Are you experiencing more blackouts than before?" Kate questioned, after asking after Sara and Henry. Sara would be on an unavoidable hiatus from therapy for at least another few weeks.

Michael nodded. "Fewer outright panic attacks - there has really just been the one, with Mike - but plenty of moments of…I don't know…blankness. In which my brain suddenly decides to go dark, for some reason."

"During times of stress, like yesterday?"

He thought about the roar he'd allowed to consume him when Sara was in the hospital. He supposed they should talk about that, too, eventually. "Sometimes, but also out of nowhere," he admitted. Those times caught him unaware, like a sudden downpour or bolt of lightening from a clear blue sky. "When Mike or Sara mentions something that was before my time with them, and I'm forced to imagine…" It felt so hard to talk about this, but this was it, wasn't it? This was the primary trigger of the blackouts. "Sometimes I have to try to picture them in their life without me and I can't stand it."

"So your brain chooses to fade to black instead," Kate supplied.

When she put it like that, it sounded almost logical.

"I know they had years of experiences before I returned, years of memories. But just when I think I've made my peace with that, something catches me off-guard."

"Such as?"

It wasn't hard to supply examples. The thing was, Michael had been back in Mike's life long enough that sometimes, familiarity combined with the fuzzy memory of early childhood caused Mike's recall of the past to get jumbled. He'd attribute things to Michael that he'd actually experienced with Jacob, and even though most of the time he caught his own mistakes, he was, after all, only seven.

There was the morning he'd bounded downstairs at the smell of cinnamon with an enthusiastic, 'Yes! You had time to make your cinnamon rolls!', just to recall, a second too late, that baking the treat had been Jacob's Sunday morning tradition, not his father's. (Michael had simply spilled the spice container on the floor reaching for coffee.)

Or the time the three of them had been downtown before Henry's arrival, and they'd passed a quaint Italian restaurant and Mike had paused to peek through the red-checkered curtains and exclaim, "Oh, I _love_ this place! We used to go here all the time!" He'd turned to plea with Michael: "Can we eat here? The owner always gives us extra cannoli, remember? 'Cause he thinks Mom is pretty." Michael had shaken his head while Sara went quiet. She'd reached for Mike's hand when he'd gone still with realization beside them.

"I'm sure he flatters all his customers," she'd said with false cheer, while Michael swallowed a rise of pain he thought might choke him.

Then there had been the time Mike did remember correctly, which had broken Michael's heart just as thoroughly: "I know you didn't get this for me, but can we put it together anyway?" he'd asked Michael with a nervous hitch in his voice, after unearthing an Erector set, still in shrink wrap, in the garage. "Because I got it when I was too little, but I think I can do it now."

Sara managed to be far more careful, of course, tucking her memories out of sight, but Mike sometimes dragged these, too, into the light of day, unintentionally making her complicit in his misinterpretation of the past. Case in point: the recent evening they'd spent brainstorming destinations to which to sail the boat they'd decided to buy. "We could drop her on the Long Island Sound," Michael had suggested, trailing a finger along the nautical map of the eastern seaboard they'd spread on the dining room table, 'then take her north to Cape Cod, Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard." He'd looked up expectantly only to see Sara's face tighten.

"Not the Cape," she said swiftly.

"But you loved the Cape," Mike had protested, climbing up on a chair to see the map better. "You're always saying _please_ let's go back."

"I don't say that, Mike," she'd shot back, with far more fire than either Mike or Michael had been quite prepared for. "I haven't anyway, in ages." She'd immediately bit her lip at this slip, apologized for her outburst, claimed a headache, and retreated from the room.

Watching her go, Mike had said precisely what Michael was thinking. "I guess…" he ventured, still trying to put the pieces together, "when she said she wanted to go back, she didn't mean with us?"

"That's not it, exactly," Michael had choked out, but that was all he could manage to tell their son, with so much jealousy raging through his veins. Because that _was_ it, wasn't it? One more black hole he didn't want but needed desperately to fill.

After spilling all of this to Kate, Michael said, "And the unknown is just as bad. The things they haven't told me, that maybe haven't occurred to them to tell me. The blanks that arise unaware…those are the worst." He struggled to come up with another example. "Answer me this," he said finally. "How can I love Mike so much, how can I know without a doubt that I'd die for him a dozen times over, but not know when he lost his first tooth? Or what he asked for for Christmas three years ago? Or what baby foods he'd hated or loved?"

"Knowing those details do not determine or reflect your level of love or commitment," Kate said gently. "But Sara would tell you those things, Michael, if they matter to you."

"But I don't want her to have to!" The sudden flare of anger caught him by surprise. "I want to know these things for myself!"

"And I can already tell how important it is to you, to know them with Henry," Kate agreed softly, not rising to Michael's voice level. "I'd be willing to bet it's all the firsts you're experiencing with him that's triggering the loss of what you didn't experience with Mike. Does that make sense?"

It did. But knowing why he felt so disoriented and miserable didn't fix the problem. "I need these blank moments to go away," he told her simply. He couldn't take care of his kids if every time they unintentionally reminded him of something he'd missed, his mind threatened a blackout on him.

"I can give you something for that, to reduce the panic attacks, to help you care for the kids," she told him, and he frowned. "But we both know that's not really my style, nor yours. I'd rather bring this into discussion with Sara." Michael began to protest, and Kate held up a hand. "I know you're feeling extra protective of her right now, and we can wait until she's ready to return to sessions. In the meantime, there are some exercises you can do, and some things we can discuss on our own."

"Such as?"

"Let's start by making a list of the blank spaces you need filled." When he grimaced, she added with an understanding smile, "That will actually be the easy part, Michael. Hearing the answers to your questions will be harder."

* * *

Dr. Kate, as it turned out, was no more immune to the charms of Henry Charles than anyone else. "You'll let me hold him for awhile, won't you?" she exclaimed at Michael and Sara's first joint appointment back in her office, about ten weeks after Henry's birth. "Because he's really no trouble at all."

"I remember a time you weren't so sure about this decision," Michael couldn't resist pointing out, nodding to Henry in Kate's grasp. She frowned at him, as though he'd completely misunderstood her.

"Tell me honestly," she requested, once they'd settled into their chairs, "how is it going?"

"We're figuring it out," Sara supplied.

Dr. Kate studied her. "Getting enough sleep? Able to rest?" Sara frowned, and Michael hid a smile. For once, he wouldn't be accused of being the overprotective one.

No dice. "Did you pay her extra to ask that?" Sara shot toward Michael. She smiled though, even as she rolled her eyes. "I'm as tired as anyone else with a two-month-old," she supplied. "No more, no less." She almost immediately retracted this: "Actually, undoubtedly less…Michael does much more than me."

"But we're not keeping score," he reminded her, as Dr. Kate absorbed this entire exchange, jotting something down on her notepad.

"The summarized version is," Sara offered, "Michael has recently promised to stop treating me like a patient, and more like a…partner," she leveled him with a meaningful look, "and I've promised to allow him to do the heavy lifting."

Kate seemed satisfied not to dig deeper…at least for the time being. She shifted gears, catching Sara up on a few additional subjects she and Michael had been discussing in one-on-one sessions, as a segue into announcing, "Michael has expressed interest in knowing more about what those seven years of separation looked like for you." She handed a now-sleeping Henry back to Sara. "It's come up for him a few times, and I think it may be pertinent to dive into that."

"I thought you discussed _your_ time away at those sessions," Sara questioned, bending slowly to ease Henry into his infant seat on the floor. Michael knew the movement still caused her pain. "Not mine."

"As she said," Michael reassured, "it's simply come up, is all."

Sara straightened. "You'd said you didn't want to know," she pressed. "Wouldn't even listen, when I tried."

He knew that, but… "It's getting harder for me to ignore the blank spaces," he told her.

Sara looked between Michael and Kate and realized she was outnumbered. "Which blank spaces?" she asked guardedly.

He cut right to the chase. "All I know is, one day it was you and Mike, moving to Ithaca, and the next, Jacob was there too. I need those dots connected."

She looked at him miserably. "Do you?"

He did. "Why did you marry him?" he blurted, point blank, only to immediately regret it when Sara blanched. "I'm sorry," he added helplessly.

Sara stared at her hands for a long while, saying nothing. Michael knew she must feel very out of practice, after so long out of this office. He knew pressing her like this was unfair. She tried twice to answer, making false starts just to close her mouth again. "I don't know what you want from me," she finally whispered. In his infant seat, Henry startled in his sleep, though there had been no exclamation, no burst of noise to alarm him. Sara glanced to him, and Michael followed her gaze to their child as she reached down to rock the seat gently to settle him again.

"Let's try this," Kate interjected. "We'll start with something less loaded. Sara, how did you meet?"

Sara looked ready to defect. "You've made it so clear you don't want to hear this," she cautioned Michael.

Michael tried to look stoic. "I need to know now. I can take it, I promise." Enough time had passed. He felt so sure of Sara, so sure of the life they'd forged since his return.

She exhaled, leaning back to look at the ceiling. Usually, Sara was the brave one, the confrontational one, the outspoken one. But she clearly didn't want to go where Kate and Michael led. "I met him in line at the pharmacy," she said reluctantly.

Michael hadn't been sure what to expect, but this answer wasn't it. Somehow, it didn't seem suave enough for Jacob. "The pharmacy?"

"Picking up a prescription for Mike. Antibiotics, for an ear infection. We'd come directly from the pediatrician's office, and he was feeling awful, but I knew I had to drag him on this errand to get his medicine before going home." She paused, remembering. "When they'd filled the scrip, I went to pay, and I couldn't find my wallet in my purse. I couldn't imagine what had happened to it…I'd just had it at the doctor's office. I practically turned my purse upside-down, but it was just…not there. Mike was whining and starting to cry - I was trying to hold him on one hip while I looked through my purse - and I was practically in tears myself, because now we'd have to go all the way back to the doctor to see if I left my wallet there before they closed, then back to the pharmacy, and I didn't want to do all that to Mike. And then someone tapped me on the shoulder, and it was Jacob, of course, behind me in line, and he said, 'I'd like to get this for you, please allow me to help.' And of course I said, 'I couldn't possibly accept, but thank you anyway,' but inside, I was already welling up with gratitude, because what a nice guy, you know? And then he smiled that…" she ground her teeth, "charming smile, and said again, 'I'd really like to be of help,' and I let him."

She said all this in the one rush of breath, then took another, and added, "And then I told him I wanted to pay him back, and he tried to refuse, so I insisted, and he handed me his card and said I could buy him a coffee. Made it sound like my idea."

"Huh," Michael exhaled, mulling this over. He took back his earlier opinion about the sophistication of Jacob's strategy. As pick up lines went, this was devious and manipulative, but also clearly very effective.

"Later that night," she said, "I found my wallet, wedged into the outside zipper pocket of my bag. I never kept it there, but figured I must have done so that one time." She frowned and Michael didn't have to point out the obvious. "When I met him for coffee, he invited me to dinner, and I asked him, point blank, 'What makes you think I'm available?' And there was this moment, when he looked taken aback. But then he covered it, and pointed out that I was there, at coffee with him, and gave me a sheepish laugh, all innocence, and I accepted. And then I spent the whole evening trying to figure out what to tell him…how to explain just how damaged I was. I shouldn't have worried." She made a face. "He already knew, of course. And what he didn't know, became painfully clear pretty quickly."

"What do you mean by that?" Kate asked the question.

Sara's light laugh sounded bitter. "Believe it or not, what you see before you today is a very healthy, well-adjusted version of myself."

Kate nodded. "I agree," she said, refusing to acknowledge Sara's implied self-criticism. Michael pursed his lips, knowing what she really meant. And he was pretty sure Dr. Kate could attest to the fact that his own pre-reunion self had been darker still.

"I made no attempt to hide how much or how often I grieved Michael as my relationship with Jacob grew. Maybe I half-hoped it would scare him off. Instead, he seemed to dig in his heels." She stared at a point on the wall. Michael felt sure she wasn't seeing the paint color or the dust or the edge of the frame of the landscape print that was meant to soothe. "What friends I had called him a saint. God, even Lincoln…" she trailed off.

"Lincoln what?" Michael probed.

Suddenly, Sara looked at Michael very earnestly, all trace of detachment gone. "Lincoln is a lot of things," she acknowledged, "we both know that. But he never wavered in what he promised you, Michael. Because he loved you, and you loved me, he was there for me, end of story. It was just such simple math for him: the three of us, caught in a metaphoric triangle, long after we thought you dead. When I knew I had to introduce him to Jacob, when I'd put it off as long as I could, I felt like the shittiest person in the world. Because when it came to Lincoln and my shared grief, I didn't want to be the first to blink."

"Was he hard on you? He had no right to be."

"After he met him," Sara said, and she actually smiled, "he said to me, 'Is that guy blind or a masochist or just a fucking idiot?'" She sighed. "I didn't take that well. I told him I hadn't expected him to like him, but that he didn't have to be an asshole, and walked away from him without another word. But, of course I knew exactly what he meant. He'd seen right through me: I didn't have the feelings for Jacob I should have, and I hadn't been doing as good a job pretending as I hoped. I apologized later that night, by way of text. 'I'm going with masochist,' I told him.

"What did he answer?"

"He just said, 'Good luck.'" She said this in the most forlorn voice, from a place that felt very far away. "I think he meant it in support, but I have to tell you, those were the most depressing two words I'd read in a long time."

* * *

He called Lincoln later that week, from his home office after Henry had gone down for his nap. They discussed Linc's latest employment, which seemed to be above-board and gainful, LJ's latest case, and a particularly interesting engineering project, before Lincoln said, "Everything okay there? Kids are okay? You don't sound too great."

"Everyone's fine. But, we're discussing Jacob now, in therapy," Michael admitted. "Specifically, Sara and Jacob. It's harder than I thought it would be, and I thought it would be fucking awful."

"Ah." Lincoln paused. "Why?"

"Why is it awful?" Michael felt incredulous.

"No man, why are you discussing it? What's the point?"

"The point is that it helps, Linc. It really does. Something about not knowing the details causes these…I don't know if I can explain…dark spaces to rise up for me. They can be debilitating, when I try to remember, or try not to remember, or just try to get through the day."

"What, like you see black spots literally? Like the PTSD stuff?"

"Yeah," Michael conceded, because that was close enough. "Like that. Maybe we put off talking about it all for too long." Even without a visual connection, Michael knew Lincoln was shaking his head. He never had seen the value in digging too deep, especially for people like Michael.

"I don't think you should be doing that," Lincoln said predictably. "You don't need to be visualizing Sara with…him."

"Don't want to is different than don't need to," he told Linc. "So I wanted to ask you…Sara says you tried to be supportive, when you found out about Jacob." He let this fact just sit there, between them, because honestly? He didn't know how he felt about it.

"Jesus, Mike. I didn't know what to do. You asked me to be there for her. Not to wrap her in tissue paper and store her safely away because you'd be back later."

That was fair. "I know," he agreed wretchedly.

After a pause, Linc said, "Jacob came to me, before he proposed. I never told Sara."

Michael felt his breath hitch in his throat. "What, like for your blessing or something?" The idea seemed bizarre, but oddly Jacob-like. He tried to figure out his angle.

"Nah, not that, really. I think he just wanted to know his odds."

"Shit."

"I felt bad for the guy. I felt he deserved to know, so I said, 'Listen: I've seen her in love, and this ain't it.'"

Lincoln certainly could be counted on to speak directly. "And? What did he say?"

"Nothing. I remember, because it was so strange. He didn't react to this at all, not even a twitch on his face. Then he just asked, almost impatiently, 'But will she say yes?' And I thought about Sara, how she thinks, how she really just lived for Mike, back then, and I said, 'Yeah. She'll say yes.' And that was that."

Michael figured he should be focusing on the part where Sara said yes, but instead, his mind was still several sentences behind. Maybe it made him petty, that he was glad Jacob had been told point blank, by an authority on Sara, no less, that she didn't love him, but when it came to delving into this part of the past, he'd take whatever comforts came his way. "Thank you for telling me, Linc," he breathed. "I knew she didn't love him, because she told me she didn't, and that's enough for me, but…it's nice to hear."

Lincoln fell silent for a moment, then said abruptly, "Do you remember the night in Chicago, when we were trying to get to Cooper Green? We'd just come off the train from Evansville, and were in that hotel room in the high rise…you, me, Sara. And you were going out, and do you remember what you said?"

Michael remembered. "I said, just in case I didn't make it, that I loved you." He hadn't said it often enough, back then.

"No," Lincoln clarified, "you said, 'I love you _both_."

Of course.

"And then you just walked out, leaving me scrambling to figure out what I'd missed."

"Well, nothing, for your ears," Michael felt the need to interject.

"No, I know, that's not my point. My point is, you left, and the door closed behind you, and Sara and I, we were just…left alone with that. I barely knew her, and we just stared at each other, across the room, and I needed to know: was she really in this? Did she mean this? Because I knew you did. And she looked back at me just as hard as I looked at her, and I saw all my own fucking fear there, in her eyes…fear for you, on the Chicago streets as a fugitive, and I was convinced. She loved you as much as I already knew you loved her, as much, maybe, as I loved you, and from that moment on, we were both living the same shitty nightmare. 'I'm terrified,' she'd said. And I told her, 'Yeah, welcome to the club.' And that's how I knew, all those years later, that it didn't matter if she married Jacob or some other guy down the line or never married again. We'd still be together in this, because she still loved you and always would."

For Lincoln, this had been a very long speech. When Michael hung up the phone a few minutes later, he knew he could hear anything about Sara's so-called marriage to Jacob, and come out on the other side.

* * *

"I married him because it seemed like the only next logical step, and putting one foot in front of the other was simply what I'd done since you told me to run out of Miami-Dade."

Michael hadn't expected this delayed answer to his question, much less such a direct one, as Sara chopped garlic and onions for soup one night shortly after their most recent session. Henry sat in his bouncy chair on the kitchen counter, babbling to himself and observing the dinner prep. Michael paused at the kitchen sink, flicking a glance toward the dining room, where Mike bent over his homework at the table. "That sounds logical," he answered slowly.

"Logical and careful," Sara agreed. "Because that's what I am, Michael, always, with only one exception." She gripped the knife in her hand a bit tightly, and he reached over slowly to peel it from her grasp. He set it one the chopping block beside her.

"I know," he acknowledged.

"And I wanted what would be best for Mike, and I wanted what I thought you'd want."

What had he wanted? On that awful day he'd learned of her marriage, in his mind's eye, Michael had finally watched Sara escape the world he'd tugged her into so long ago. It was as though he'd finally seen what he hadn't been able to witness in Miami-Dade: Sara running, Sara pushing open that door, Sara outside, in the night air.

He nodded. "All I wanted," he told her, "was for it to be over for you. The fear, the danger, the looking over your shoulder. Selfishly, I'd wanted to be at your side when you made it, but I'd given up on that hope a long time before." He paused, and dared to look her in the eye, to stare down all the pain pooled there. "You had given up on that, too, or you wouldn't have married him."

Since she couldn't argue this fact, she focused on keeping tears at bay, hyper aware of Mike nearby, of Henry watching his parents with wide, clear eyes. She fumbled for Michael's hand, and he found hers and clasped it. "If I'd known who you married, it would have been different," Michael promised. "I didn't know. I didn't know." The three words continued in a loop in his head. "All I did know was, you were no longer mine." He'd tumbled into darkness after that. He'd allowed the black days to consume him, the blank spots to stretch wide. It hadn't mattered much to him for a long time, what happened to him. "If saying yes to him made you happy," Michael said now, "I think I can be truly glad of that."

She looked at him like he'd entirely missed the point. "Saying yes may have made me feel safer, I suppose. It allowed me to give Mike something resembling normal. But it didn't make me happy. Obviously."

He gaped at her. It hadn't actually occurred to him, until now, that she had given up on 'happy', the way he'd given up on 'together'. He didn't corner the market on misery, he reminded himself fiercely, even in a hellhole in Yemen. He pulled her against him. When she pressed her face to his chest, he smelled the faint trace of garlic clinging to her hair. "I _wanted_ happy for you," he told her roughly. "And for Mike."

"Well, we got it," she said shakily. "Eventually." She sighed into his shirt, and Michael tightened his arms around her. From the dining room, Mike glanced over quizzically, observed their embrace, then looked away with faint embarrassment. This made Michael smile.

"Mike?" he called, still holding Sara. "Your presence is requested." He glanced sidelong at his son, who tried to shake his head and bend over his paper again, only to be outed by the shy smile curving his lips. "Mike…"

With an exasperated laugh, Mike pushed his chair out dramatically and crossed the kitchen to them. "You guys are weird," he informed them, as Michael released Sara with one arm to curl it around Mike, drawing him into the fold. "No other parents do this."

"How do you know?" Sara asked, her voice muffled.

Mike thought about this, because he thought about everything. "I just know," he said eventually. But Michael felt his small arm reach around his back as he snuggled in closer. Against his chest he felt the vibration of Sara's laugh.

"Their loss," she said.

* * *

Mike's participation was also requested at their next session with Dr. Kate. As usual, this put Michael at unease. He didn't relish the idea of his son reliving anything he might rather forget, even for his own, and his parents', good.

"Do you ever think about Jacob, Mike?" Kate asked, leaning toward him as Mike distracted himself with a Shrek finger puppet he'd found in the bin of toys at his disposal.

"Think what?" Mike looked immediately guarded.

Kate smiled at him reassuringly. "Nothing important. Just maybe…think of something you'd like to tell him, or remember something funny, that sort of thing."

"Jacob is in prison," Mike answered definitively. "My dad will make sure he stays there."

"That's right," Michael echoed.

Kate frowned at him, then tried a new tact with Mike. "Do you think Jacob ever thinks about you, Mike? Ever wants to send you a letter or call you?" Kate probed.

"He's not allowed," Mike supplied. Michael nodded.

Kate shot him an exasperated look. Michael knew what she was thinking: he, Michael, had wanted to connect these dots, and now was actively fighting her on it. He forced himself to sit back and just listen. "If he were allowed," Kate pressed, "what do you think he'd say?"

Mike thought about this, pausing in his examination of the puppet. "I think he'd ask me to try and get my mom to call him," he decided.

No kidding. Michael stopped himself, just in the nick of time, from expressing this aloud.

"Did he do that a lot, when he lived with you? Try to get you to convince your mom of things?"

Objection. Leading the witness, Michael thought darkly. "Not so much when he lived with us, but…before?" Mike decided. "Like, he'd ask me if I liked Star Wars and then tell me I should ask Mom if we could all go."

Michael shifted in his chair in frustration. His kid had been three, four years old. What sort of person calculatingly manipulates a preschooler? At least, Sara seemed equally angry to hear this. "That was _his_ idea?" she asked.

Mike gave her the look he used to reserve for Michael, when he said something he deemed obvious. "Of course, Mom."

She stared forward stonily as she added this fact to her long list of ways in which Jacob had pulled the wool over her eyes. Michael reached across for her hand and squeezed it.

"Do you remember any times when Jacob would get upset, Mike?" Kate asked.

"He didn't like it when my mom thought about my dad." Mike's eyes slid to Michael.

"How did you know she was thinking about him?"

"We both knew. We could see it on her face." Mike paused, remembering something. "He would get all sulky. Slam stuff around in the kitchen."

This, mercifully, made Michael's lips twitch. It felt good to win a hand.

His victory felt short-lived. After Mike exited the session to retrieve a promised Tootsie Pop from the receptionist, Sara trailing behind him, Kate gave Michael homework. "You two are doing well, discussing some pretty heavy topics at home," she noted. "But did you notice how last session, I asked Sara for a specific memory of Jacob…the day she'd met him?" He nodded warily. "It can be easier to both divulge and absorb difficult memories when they're broken down into snapshots like that. Pick one more…one moment you want to know more about from Sara's time apart from you…and ask her about it before next week. I think it will help you."

Michael looked down the hall to where Sara had turned the corner. He couldn't push her too far. He wouldn't allow her to become worn down, not when she'd just begun to feel healthy again. "But will it help her?"

"If I didn't think it would, I wouldn't recommend it, Michael."

* * *

It wasn't hard to decide on a moment, and that night, Michael closed their bedroom door behind him before attempting to battle his jealousy (not Sara) head on. "Will you talk to me about Cape Cod?" he asked. He tried to keep his voice gentle, but control over his emotions was tenuous, at best.

Even though her avoidance of this subject had come up weeks ago, Sara seemed to have been expecting a replay. She rolled away from him on the bed, answering the wall. "Honeymoon," she said with simple resignation, on a sigh.

Oh. This explanation truly hadn't occurred to Michael. "I always figured he'd take you somewhere more exotic," he said, trying hard not to sound bitter. "Turks and Caicos, or Fiji, maybe." He'd never asked where they'd gone, or if they'd gone anywhere at all, not even when they'd delved so thoroughly into Sara's past in therapy. He'd had his limits. Toeing this line felt dangerous. His pulse had already started to spike at the idea of imaging Sara on a honeymoon with Jacob.

"He had grand plans, yes, but I didn't want to go too far from Mike."

That made sense. He sat down on the bed without consciously deciding to do so; contact with the mattress almost surprised him. "But…it was good? Good enough that you'd wanted to go back?" God, what sort of twisted torture was this? Was there an answer that wouldn't sucker punch him in the gut? He _loved_ Sara. The thought of her suffering, even in a marriage to someone else, sickened him. The thought of her happy, in a marriage to someone else, sickened him.

She sat up and faced him. "You don't understand," she said defiantly. "I had to try."

Images of Sara with Jacob, images of Sara 'trying', sprang unbidden to his mind, and he violently banished them. Or tried to, anyway. "I'm not judging you, Sara." God, couldn't she see? He had no room in his head for judgement with this much jealously swimming behind his eyes. He could barely keep his head above water.

"No, you don't get to judge," she said swiftly. "You weren't there." She immediately looked away from him again, letting that observation hang in the air between them.

Why did she feel the need to be so defensive? But even as he thought this, Michael wondered if he already knew the answer. If perhaps, maybe…the awful gut-punch he's grown so used to landed. The honeymoon _had_ been good. Better than she wanted Michael to know. He leaned forward on the end of the bed, head in his hands.

Witnessing his body language seemed to soften whatever armor Sara had donned. "Yeah," she added softly, just a trace of her earlier defiance in her tone. "It was good." Speaking this truth seemed to both relieve her and scare her. They both sat there, separate, locked in private pain for a long moment. "I gave it everything I had, because I promised myself I would. And while we were away, on the Cape, just the two of us, it seemed like maybe that would be enough. He seemed to relax a bit, become less intense, and I…I think I could breathe easier there, away from my real life. I could feel like someone else. But I was wrong: the Cape wasn't enough. I could only make it work for one damn week. Then I was back home with Mike and back to square one."

"Mike made it harder?" Was it wretched of him that this gave him a stab of gladness?

She gave this consideration. "Mike made everything in my life better," she said slowly, "except my relationship with Jacob. He made that much, much harder."

Michael thought he understood what she meant. Mike was, after all, the physical manifestation of their relationship. Their partnership. Their love for one another. He took a deep breath. "I need to hear about it just once, and then I never want to hear about it again," he said swiftly. "In bed…was that good, too?"

He made the request so swiftly, he wasn't entirely sure she'd heard him, but he hoped so, because he couldn't bear to repeat it. She looked down at the sheets, her fingers absently worrying one hem. Was it out of shyness, to spare his feelings, what? "I don't know how it's been for you," she said after a beat, "but for me, nothing has ever been like this." She waved one hand between herself and Michael. "As good as this." She looked up at him. "If you have to know, I'm sure Jacob was perfectly…competent…but any…proficiency…was pretty much lost on me. Our sex life was mediocre, and I'm sure the fault was not his."

He gently tipped her face up, two fingers under her chin. The sight of the tears in her eyes, not quite falling, loosened the chokehold jealousy had on him. "I'm sorry," he said, and he meant it. It must have felt sickening, sleeping with someone she didn't truly love. Almost as sickening as imagining it, as the person who loved _her_. He wrapped his free a hand around her forearm to draw her to him. The last thing he wanted was for her to feel alienated from him right now. He felt her exhale as she slid toward him on the bed. He kissed her softly, then, when her hand rose to curl around the back of his neck, tugging him closer, a little less softly. "Nothing has ever been as good this - as us - for me, either," he breathed. "Not even close."

He felt her smile of gratification against his mouth, the tip of her tongue trailing his bottom lip in the way that absolutely undid him, then she pulled back. "I'm yours, body and soul," she said almost severely. "I'm sorry I can't say I always have been. In body, I mean."

He captured her mouth again, tasting her as his hands reached for her hips, pulling her closer still. "If I have to choose, I choose soul," he told her. "Anytime. Every time."


End file.
